Giving Up Spiritual Journeys
by: New Monastic -- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on April 6th, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Don lived for years in the Chicago area, working hard and trying to keep up with the fast pace of his profession. Several years ago, he left the city and took a job on a somewhat remote college campus run by Benedictines. While visiting on the campus once, he and I walked the carefully cared-for grounds, talking about our faith. “Since coming here,” Don said, “I’ve given up my spiritual journey.”
I could tell from his smile that he had a point to make, so I asked what he meant. “Well, you know, we Christians talk a lot about our spiritual journeys. We get excited about experiences and go places looking for the next spiritual high. We say God called us here. Then God calls us there. But it’s all so individualistic. It’s all so focused on little ‘lessons’ or ‘insights’ that we’re supposed to take with us to the next place.” Don paused and looked around at some of the old men in long black robes who were walking by us on the campus. “I think I’m learning from these guys that God can change us if we’ll settle down in one place. So I’ve given up my spiritual journey. I’m going to just stay with God here and see how I can grow.”
We cannot ignore the many ways that our culture of hypermobility has shaped how we think about our spiritual lives. Thanks to cheap plane tickets and strong economies, we can go more places now than we’ve ever been able to go before. We go to Italy to see where Francis lived and to Ireland to learn about Celtic Christianity. When it’s relatively safe, we go to Israel to walk where Jesus walked. We go to conferences to hear from the latest spiritual gurus and we go to retreat centers to find some solace in our busy lives.
Of course, we find some good in all these places. But picking up fragments of spiritual wisdom can begin to feel like trying to piece together a tree from limbs that we’ve broken off here and there. Even if we gather enough limbs to make a tree, something is still missing. Life just isn’t in the pieces the same way it is in a tree whose roots are fixed in the soil of a particular place.
The practice of stability invites us to give up spiritual journeys for the sake of growing in a life with God. As it turns out, people have been doing this for thousands of years. What is more, staying put is becoming something of a movement of its own today. I’ve written more about this in my book, The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture, which released this week. You can watch a short video about it by clicking here: The Wisdom of Stability.
A very apt teaching for our time, Jonathan. Very challenging. I never “planned” to move to California but I came on a brief trip, stayed for a little when someone asked me to paint their house, then fell in love with a woman, who then visited me in England, at which point we decided to make our life together – in the US. Then, as my parents declined, I found flying back to England every year until they died. I don’t know how much of all this was a spiritual journey but it was certainly a psychological one, a reaching for love, plus a certain ease at letting go of my home country and parents, and the excitement of a different culture that freed me to do what I was trying to do then, which was to write novels, and then love and duty resurfacing around my parents’ old age.
There are so many of us leading lives like this. I know a Guatemalan Christian in the hotel trade in London who went to work in Hong Kong to be close to her Turkish Muslim boyfriend… This is the melting pot the whole world is turning into. It does have spiritual benefits and challenges — all these religions and cultures jostling up against each other, forcing rethinks, generating fusions. So it is very easy to lose sight of what you are teaching here. But this lesson of stability is one that may be forced on us by rising energy costs. It’s good to see the value in it for itself.
I just came from a class in Hebrew in which we translated Psalm 1. Verse 3 came to mind as I was reading this post: And like a tree planted by channels of water that gives fruit in the right time, whose leaves do not wither, all that he [sic] does will thrive.
A tree takes a long time to set roots, to bear fruit, to thrive. In our world of instant gratification the psalmist and your post help me to see the value in putting down roots, to giving something of value the space and time to grow. Thank you.
After living in many places and seeing many parts of the world, I know the essence of my spiritual journey has been the inward journey in supportive community. The felt sense of being known in a welcoming and supportive place, I call home. That place within myself is where my soul resides. I believe that “soul” is that unique part of “God” embodied in each of us. Traveling to far away places in a “spiritual journey” to find God may only be an escape or distraction from the difficult, satisfying and ongoing effort to “know thyself”.
This is a very beautiful diary The image of a tree is apt. I also left Chicago, landing ultimately in Northern NM where I have remained for the past 20 years. It has meant a lot to me to raise my children in one small town, in one house, with a lifelong set of friends.
The real reason why must we live in seclusion to walk the spiritual journey is a difficult and proper decision. Many people often do not realize this. In fact by cultivating among a disturb society and attain enlightens.